Blood Countess

"And after he's been hooked, I'll play the one's that's on his heart."

The Blood Countess is a vampire, witch, or simple occultist/serial killer obsessed with blood who's Always Female. She may or may not be an actual countess.

Let's take a look at her core traits, of which all need to apply:

1. She's dirty rich (or at least used to be). If she's an actual countess or some other type of landowner, that is probably the source of her wealth. If it isn't a regular aristocratic setting, it may happen that she married a rich man who had died due to "mysterious causes", and she inherited his possessions.
2. She's evil, and usually her motives are purely diabolical or selfish.
3. She will be closely tied to or obsessed with blood, and utilize it in some way. Either by bathing in blood, drinking blood, applying it to her face, or using it in some demonic ritual.

To add, she may strive to look young and beautiful, or perhaps become immortal. Blood usually has a play in this. Additionally, she might also be sexy, in which case you can pretty much count on her to have sex with a ton of people, sometimes with both sexes. If she's a vampire, this might make her a Lesbian Vampire. If she likes to exploit her sexual partners, this makes her The Vamp, also. If she has always belonged to the higher class, she will most likely act and dress very elegantly. She will most likely be confident in her actions, mannerisms, and speech, and is unlikely to be intimidated or frightened. Both her elegance and confidence may add to her sexiness.

You most likely won't find The Blood Count on her side, but rather she will probably be a widow.

She might be obsessed with young, virgin girls (or some other groups of people) perhaps due to her need of their blood. She might choose not to kill them off instantly, and keep them around as servants. She may call them "daughters", adding to her matriarchal image.

If it's a common Gothic setting, expect her to live in an expensive yet terrifying palace.

The origin of this type of character probably revolves around the legend of Elizabeth Báthory, an alleged serial killer and noblewoman.

This is a subtrope of Aristocrats Are Evil. May overlap with Femme Fatale, Vampires Are Rich, or Vampire Monarch if she's the leader of a whole coven of vampires, and she's one herself. Not to be confused with The Baroness.

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Examples:

Comic Books

• Secret Six: Jeannette has many of the stereotypical traits of the blood countess, being obscenely wealthy, a widow, and having her own "castle" (in this case a hotel/casino in Las Vegas), but she is obsessed with violence and torture, not blood, and is a banshee rather than a vampire. Her origins name-check the ur-example; she was originally a servant of Lady Bathory and became undead after a botched execution for her role in Bathory's death.
• X-Men: The villainess Selene is basically a vampire in all but name (she has psychic powers, is immortal), and also has life-draining powers to stay perpetually beautiful. She was born in Transylvania and practices blood magic to become a goddess. She is obsessed with young girls, has a cabal of underlings, and also wears a corset outfit, reminiscent of 19th century and former aristocratic fashion. She is also a member of the Hellfire Club, a prestigious community raising her to the upper echelons of society. Sometimes she is stylized as "Lady Selene" and "Black Queen". To further hammer the comparison home, alternate covers for X-Force (2008) during the Necrosha event paid homage to posters of vampire movies, and placed Selene in some of them.

Films — Animated

• Hellboy: Blood & Iron has the main antagonist Erzsebet Ondrushko based off the real Elizabeth Bathory, except she's an actual vampire and witch in service of the Greek Goddess Hecate.

Films — Live-Action

• Countess Dracula: Countess Elizabeth accidentally discovers that the blood of one of her ladies-in-waiting makes her look younger. She then kills her and bathes in her blood, transforming her into a young woman, similar looking to her own daughter. However, the effect wears off, and Elizabeth realises she must kill again.
• Daughters of Darkness (1971) is predicated on the idea that Trope Namer Elizabeth Báthory was a real vampire who survived and thrived into the 1970s.
• Eternal: A Canadian detective goes after his missing wife and crosses paths with the beautiful, wealthy, and mysterious Elizabeth Kane, who is actually Elizabeth Báthory.
• Fright Night 2: New Blood: In this 2013 sequel/re-remake to the 2011 remake of the 1985 cult-classic, Jamie Murray interprets Gerri Dandrige, who is really Elizabeth Báthory masquerading as a university professor in Romania. Like the classic depiction of vampires, she also owns a castle.
• The Neon Demon: The three villains, Sarah, Gigi, and Ruby. Though Sarah and Gigi are more traditionally famous as models (while Ruby is "only" a makeup artist), Ruby is implied to be the wealthiest of all. She lives in an enormous house in L.A. that she claims to be housesitting, but her Mysterious Past suggests it might just belong to her. She kills Jesse after trying to sexually assault her and all three bathe in her blood and cannibalize her, seeking her beauty and youth. When Ruby cleans up afterward, she is depicted as having occultist tattoos, though exactly what they mean isn't clarified.
• Once Bitten: The Countess is a rich female vampire who needs the blood of a young male virgin to stay beautiful.
• Queen of the Damned: Akasha used to be a member of Egyptian nobility who drinks blood, and is considered to be an ancestor to the vampire race. She also wears revealing clothes, such as a medallion instead of a top.
• Stay Alive (2006): The game Stay Alive features a character called the "Blood Countess", a serial killer vampire aristocrat based in New Orleans, who likes to drink blood and break mirrors in a fit of rage. She may have either been based on both/either historical figures Elizabeth Báthory or Madame Lalaurie.

Literature

• Carmilla: The real name of the title character is Countess Mircalla Karstein, who is an actual vampire obsessed with a young girl. This is probably also the inspiration for this trope and many general vampire works, specifically Dracula.
• Since the roll-call of past Magpyrs in Carpe Jugulum includes as many vampire tropes as possible, it naturally includes Countess Carmilla de Magpyr, who despite the name is a parody of Elizabeth Bathory. The modern Magpyrs however, say she can't have bathed in the blood of 200 virgins because the bath would have overflown. They've checked.
• Count and Countess: The Countess, Elizabeth Bathory, who bathes in blood and has a cross-time correspondence with Count Vlad III Dracula.
• "Snow, Glass, Apples", a dark reimagining of Snow White, has Snow White be, just like the original Grimm fairy tale, a princess, daughter to an unnamed king and queen. When the queen dies, her father marries a second wife. The story then flips the script entirely: Snow White is a vampire with skin white and cold as snow, who, in the course of the story, seduces other men — including the Seven Dwarves — to drink their blood. She kills her own father by drinking his lifeblood and, following the traditional sequence with the poisoned apple, allies herself with a creepy prince to oust her stepmother (who, in reality, is the heroine of the story).
• A Song of Ice and Fire: A very rare gender-flipped example. Roose Bolton is a feudal ruler who is tyrannical to his subjects and treacherous to his peers and liege lords, his seat is called "the Dreadfort", his family is infamous for skinning people alive, and he likes leeching (sticking leeches on his body to suck his blood in order to "stay healthy") to the point that he has been dubbed "Lord Leech" by other nobles.
• Torture Princess: Fremd Torturchen: The titular character, Elisabeth Le Fanu (whose name is a portmanteau of Elizabeth Báthory and the author of Carmilla, Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu), was the Delicate and Sickly child of a noble family in a Gothic Horror setting when her Evil Uncle Vlad tricked her into consuming the heart of a demon, which healed her body but left her wracked with pain that was relieved only by torturing others. She eventually killed the entire population of her town in an orgy of violence that transformed her into a being called the Torture Princess: a haughty, black-clad young woman who thrills in violence and is able to conjure torture and execution implements out of Hammerspace, which she quickly turned on her uncle and the demons he worshiped.

Live-Action TV

• American Horror Story:
  • American Horror Story: Coven: Madame Lalaurie is a 19th-century rich socialite who likes to torture her slaves for fun, and use their blood as skin care in order to look younger. Although cursed, she becomes immortal. Even though she can be intimidated, she still keeps an arrogant (and racist, of course) attitude in her "second" life.
  • American Horror Story: Hotel: The Countess/Elizabeth is an actual vampire, who's the current owner of Hotel Cortez, which is pretty scary, as it's filled with demons and ghosts. She can only sustain herself on blood and uses her elegant and fashionable claws to cut throats. She's also a self-widow, which is mostly how she gained so much money. She has also kidnapped some children and raised them as her own little vampires, playing into the mother role.
• Penny Dreadful: Madame Kali owns a big, scary, Gothic castle. She isn't a vampire, but she's a witch and an occultist. She's also a matriarch to her "daughters", and...pretty evil (I mean she serves the literal Devil). She isn't afraid to use magic or magical creatures, and she is NOT one to be intimated. Oh, and she also likes to bathe in blood.
• Van Helsing (2016) has several iterations of this trope. First is Rebecca, a leather-clad The Baroness-type who serves as The Dragon for the first season before being killed off. After her comes Michaela, who has her own Battle Harem of young vampire women, though her base of operations is more like a temple than a palace, and her wealth comes from plundering South America rather than killing off a husband. And finally, there's the Dark One, a Countess Dracula who rules over the vampires while disguised as the female President of the United States and has the White House as her "palace". Curiously enough, there's also a character named Bathory, but she is not this trope, but was a Romani vampire hunter who became an Elite Mook for the Dark One.
• What We Do in the Shadows (2019): In one episode, a countess named Carmilla from the Old World is a member of the Worldwide Supreme Vampiric Council. She comes to visit Nadja and Nandor with other members of the supreme council. She's dressed in a typical elegant party dress and gets excited when Nadja tells her she has killed Nandor because he was threatening her power, even though she wouldn't know anything about the situation, so she just got excited at hearing a vampire killed another vampire.

Tabletop Games

• Chronicles of Darkness: In Immortals, "Mother Liesel" leads a Cult of adoring worshippers who lavish every luxury on her. The cult's true function, however, is to conduct the ritual Blood Baths that maintain her immortality, because they require the sacrifice of people who love her. (Reciprocation and consent are optional.)
• Warhammer: Isabella von Carstein, nee von Drak, Countess of Sylvania. The blood heir of former Count of Sylvania, Otto von Drak, Isabella is a powerful vampire (she was turned by her husband Vlad von Carstein, who married into the title) and her Iconic Item on the tabletop is the Blood Chalice of Bathory, an enchanted cup that flows eternally with the blood of her victims, which Isabella can use to heal herself, her husband or her bodyguards. Unlike her husband, Isabella has always been presented as looking eternally young and beautiful, both in the tabletop game and the video game spin-offs.

Video Games

• Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night: Bloodless is an ancient vampiress whom you first encounter while she's bathing in a tub of blood to maintain her youthful appearance, in an obvious send-up to Elizabeth Báthory.
• Castlevania has its own examples, based on two traditional vampiresses:
  • Castlevania: Bloodlines, for the Sega Genesis, stars Elizabeth Bartley (a corruption of Erszébet Báthory) as Dracula's niece and The Heavy, being the one responsible for Dracula's revival this time.
  • Castlevania: Circle of the Moon: The main antagonist is the vampiress Carmilla, who resurrects Dracula in her own Austrian castle during the early 1800s.
• Darkest Dungeon: The Crimson Court DLC introduces the Countess, a bewitchingly beautiful aristocrat who feeds off blood, is drawn to the estate by the Heart that lurks beneath the manor of the estate, and is possibly feeding off its blood.
• Diablo II: The Countess lives in the cellar of an isolated tower, is said to have "bathed in the blood of a hundred virgins", has vats filled with blood all over her lair, and drops an incredible amount of gold when you kill her.
• Fate Series:
  • Fate/EXTRA: Elizabeth Bathory appears as a Lancer-class Servant in the sequel game, CCC. While she represents the version of her before she became obsessed with eternal youth, she retains her Torture Technique skill from the stories in which she tortured hundreds of men and women who tried to escape her Castle Csejte.
  • Fate/Grand Order introduces Carmilla herself as an Assassin-class Servant. Unlike the pop idol-obsessed Elizabeth, Carmilla fully embraces her cruelty and associations with blood. She can send waves of blood to attack her enemies, teleport between puddles of blood, and attacks her foes with iron maidens. She also heals herself and increases her attack power by bathing in the blood of her victims.
• Resident Evil Village: Alcina Dimitrescu is not an actual vampire, but is an aristocrat, sexy, has "daughters", drinks blood, is a serial killer, and owns a very gorgeous yet scary castle.
• Vampire: The Masquerade — Night Road: Elin Olivecrona is a Ventrue vampire — a bloodline associated with nobility, social elites, and condescending snobbery — and a rich businesswoman who runs a migrant camp where blood is harvested from immigrants.

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